


Snowflakes

by Samuraiter



Category: Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-10
Updated: 2012-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-30 22:18:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/336758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samuraiter/pseuds/Samuraiter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One small possibility for how Lyn and Florina might have had a shared ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snowflakes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Measured](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Measured/gifts).



The Ilians had never been inclined to fortify the border between their nation and Sacae, but individual orders of Pegasus Knights – from the lowliest mercenaries to the Royal Flight – maintained independent posts along the frontier, speckling the mountains like snowflakes scattered across a map. Almost all of them had been abandoned due to the combination of a declining population and a remoteness from civilization. That same remoteness had prompted Lyn and Florina to rehabilitate one of the small keeps – the shell of a tower, located on the side of a nameless mountain in the depths of the main range – and reclaim it for themselves.

Attempting to reach the keep by any means other than riding a Pegasus proved to be almost impossible, particularly during the winter. It might have been feasible to use a goat or a mule to negotiate the approaches during the good months, but the slightest hint of a blizzard made the paths disappear into whiteness, the blankets of snow hiding deadfalls sufficient to send a whole pack train to a death that might remain undiscovered until long after the first thaw, assuming the thaw happened at all. Several years had passed in Ilia where, up in the mountains, the winter remained forbidding and unbroken. It certainly helped to deter any unwelcome visitors.

Lyn preferred not to think of the white death outside the walls. She and Florina had fortified their new home against it, taking one small corner of the keep and converting it into a home. To all appearances, the structure still looked empty from the outside, and one had to find the cellars in order to discover where the couple had set up their domain. The stone walls of the room had been covered from ceiling to floor by a combination of blankets and carpets, the fruit of bartering furs for other goods in Sacae, and a simple wood-burning stove – rigged to the most unobtrusive chimney pipe that either occupant could cobble together – provided warmth as needed, as well as fire for cooking what they caught in their forays to the outside.

Outside. The notion had acquired a peculiarity that it had not possessed before. The keep perched at the edge of the treeline, the conifers falling away to the long series of ridges and crags that marked the body of the mountain, most of it covered by blank, endless snow. True, that wilderness concealed the deer and rabbits that kept them sustained, but, at the same time, it represented a gulf between home and a world that seemed as far away as a continent on the other side of the ocean. It reminded her of all they had been asked to leave behind them.

She heard Huey stir in the other room. The Pegasus – now in his prime, his white feathers sporting a silver edge that she had not seen on them before – was their lifeline, but he was also a constant companion. He had gotten to the point of letting Lyn ride him without Florina, but she always preferred to ride together with her, and she had yet to be fully comfortable with the slightly different saddle that his wings required. Sometimes, she missed the horses of the plains and the nomadic lifestyle they represented, but Huey was a better listener than any earthbound horse she had encountered, and she had long since become glad for his presence.

But the reason she had decided to come to Ilia in the first place lay cradled in her arms. Florina. She seemed small, almost child-like, asleep as she was, but her slight frame belied the reality of her strength. Her spear never missed its target, and any who thought her unassuming and weak had never seen the way her muscles bunched beneath her skin as she prepared to make the throw, had never seen her clear-eyed assessment of her target and all the ways it might try to escape the killing blow. She had long since become a full Pegasus Knight, the days of her novitiate long behind her, though she, like Lyn, had renounced war years ago.

Lyn felt hard-pressed to determine when they had become more than friends. Granted, they had always been close, and their reunion during the war against the Black Fang had only reinforced that bond, but there had never quite been a word for what they had shared, not until months after the end of the conflict. Then, after the parting of the company, they had agreed to stay together, and that decision had carried several layers of meaning that Lyn had been trying to peel back for ages. She felt as though Florina had become her wife, though the term 'wife' seemed inadequate. She was more than that, and, truth be told, had always been.

And yet she still seemed small and vulnerable, wrapped up in layers of blankets, resting her head on the shoulder that Lyn provided as her chest rose and fell in deep, even breaths. They had always been two halves of a whole, each needing the other. Eliwood had once said that he had never met a woman as strong and independent as Lyn, and yet Lyn had found that she only felt strong when Florina was with her. Then again, Eliwood had never guessed that what Lyn and Florina shared was anything more than a long friendship stretching back almost to childhood. Not unlike what he and Hector had always shared, she supposed.

Lyn ran her fingers through the lavender curls spilling down her chest, half-smiling to herself when she was rewarded with a soft 'hmm' of happiness for her efforts. She liked the long moments before dawn, when they had nothing to do and nowhere to be – no hunting, no gathering, no bartering, nothing. There was a soft timelessness to it, as if she and Florina were the only two people in the entire world, and the only thing that mattered at all was the line of emotion that connected one heart to the other. The only sound was their shared breathing, layered over their competing heartbeats and the occasional 'pop' from the stove.

 _We will have to go and visit the others, sooner or later,_ Lyn thought, _and we will have to see how everybody is doing. For now, though, this is all that I need_. She closed her eyes, tracing her fingers along the familiar curves of the one she loved until she could lay her hand flat against the small of her back and encourage her to snuggle a little closer. Again, a happy sound, so small as to scarcely be audible. Outside, the white death lurked, but it all seemed to fade against a background of warmth, love, memory, and possibility.

 **END**.


End file.
